Humor

To An Ungrateful Steve Jobs

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on September 22, 2011, and in the Fairfield Sun on September 29, 2011, both in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was written after Steve Jobs announced his retirement as head of Apple, but before he passed away. I deserve better than this, Steve. We go way back, after all: Remember when “going to the Dark Side” meant using a Windows product? How quaint. Now Microsoft is the kid brother who tries to tag along wherever you go. Have you forgotten our history? I was weaned on your Apple II computers at Tomlinson Junior High, those beige metal boxes that had all the computing power of today’s Hallmark cards. You were my first, a DOS programming experience that resulted in games where players were faced with ever-worsening options to avoid an inevitably gruesome death. You had me hooked despite your lack of graphics or your white typeface on that daunting black screen. Like dogs, Apple never computed in color. By comparison, my brother’s IBM PCjr was a white monstrosity that took up our entire desk and weighed almost thirty pounds. Simply clicking on the keyboard made the tabletop wobble like a cartoon chicken. My dad, who’d only recently ushered in the technology era for the Walsh household with a surprise Atari purchase at Christmas, made me fall in love with you all over again when he bought the first Macintosh computer. Apple had changed the game by replacing the black screen/white typeface with… (wait for it) blue screen/black typeface. Still, it was a fraction of the size of the IBM, didn’t require DOS programming to run commands, and it had a mouse. It didn’t do much, but it made a nice clicking noise that sounded like progress. I’ll admit I’ve had my doubts about you over the years. When my brother brought home the Macintosh II, I felt like the stodgy nun watching Whoopi Goldberg singing and dancing around the convent. Who needed all those pictures, all that color? Computers were for coding. If you wanted flash, watch TV! I stuck with your more pedestrian fare, sinking the last of my student loan money into one of your PowerBook 100 laptops. With a screen the size of my iPhone and the processing speed of my cocker spaniel, it allowed me the freedom to wait for the 10-minute boot-up procedure any place I chose… as long as it came before the 30-minute battery died. All this without all that troublesome color. Like Leo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic, we clung to each other in a sea of technological change as Bill Gates turned Windows into the industry standard. Companies simply stopped making software for Apple computers. You swore you’d never let go… until you did. When you left Apple, I left. I bought my first Windows computer shortly thereafter, feeling dirty and alone. In the nineties, the dwindling pool of knuckle-draggers who clung to their Macs were mocked much like Betamax users were…

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Dynamite In The Wrong Hands

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on August 25, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) “It’s not fair!” whined the little boy as he tore from his mother’s grip. “Everybody else has an iPad or a Nook; why do I have to use a stupid Kindle? It’s not even in color!” He jammed an e-reader back onto the shelf, knocking the “Back to School” sign off in the process, before his mother managed to wrangle him out of the electronics department. She kept apologizing to him, asking him to realize how much it cost, even as she dragged him out of the store. A few of the other customers exchanged condescending glances, but I understood the moment all too well: it was Dynamite magazine all over again. When I was that kid’s age, I was going into 6th grade at Timothy Dwight School. Among the many rites of September was the magical hour when the teacher would spread the Scholastic Arrow Book Club sheets on the tables before us, inviting us into the world of reading through a series of tiny checkboxes we’d fill out in pencil. We could order any book or magazine we’d like, provided we came in later that week with the cash or check from home. The teacher would give a short summary of each magazine and show us a few sample issues. Alas, like Wyle E. Coyote, I only had eyes for Dynamite. Dynamite was a glossy magazine for children that fed us popular culture in elementary school bits: think People magazine on training wheels. It featured the biggest stars of the day on its covers without the girlish stigma of Tiger Beat or the amateurish camp of Bananas. Before the days of cable TV and the internet, magazines had cache. In short: if you were cool, you got your copy of Dynamite each month in the big brown box the teacher lugged from the staff room. If you weren’t cool, you waited to be handed your free copy of Junior Scholastic. Not that there’s anything wrong with Junior Scholastic, mind you, just as there’s nothing wrong with a free VD shot or buying ramen noodles in bulk. It contained the news of the day in digest form, followed by a series of reading comprehension questions and quick quizzes or word searches. It was supposed to make current events fun, a form of Flintstones chewable vitamins meant to cover up the aftertaste of Walter Cronkite. The good folks at Scholastic carefully chewed up the news before regurgitating their monthly cocktail into our eager 6th grade hands, their cover stories bearing headlines like, “Understanding The Hostage Crisis” or “The SALT Treaty and You.” If Dynamite magazine was dinner and drinks with Alec Baldwin, Junior Scholastic was jumping bail with Daniel Baldwin. In addition to Magic Wanda’s page of tricks, the Good Vibrations advice column, Count Morbida’s puzzles, the Bummers page (adolescent bits of satire that always began with, “Don’t you hate it when…”), or the occasional pull-out poster,…

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Fending Off The Inevitable

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on August 11, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) The moment you realize you’ve slowly become your parents is always a surprise; my moment arrived when I told my wife we’d joined a boat club. While I’d never made a secret of my desire to get out on the water, she reacted the same way my mom had years ago when my dad announced he’d just bought the family a boat. An odd smile formed on her lips as if forced to appear at gunpoint. “Really?” she said. Just like Mom once did. “That’s interesting.” Women are smarter than men; all the women in my life, at least. In the second week of August, however, the brutal heat and humidity of Fairfield County can lead otherwise reasonable men to ignore the wisdom of these women and seek refuge in the comforting arms of material excess. For some it’s a red convertible, for others a shiny new motorcycle; for the Walsh family, it’s always been boats. Growing up, my six brothers and sisters and I were prisoners of the thermostat. Because my dad didn’t “believe” in air conditioning any more than he believed in swimming pools or Bigfoot, the summer heat reduced us to boneless, moist clumps of flesh draped over the couches like melted chocolate. When he told us about the boat, we felt as if Moses were leading us out of the desert. My mom stood stoically to one side, no doubt mouthing a silent rosary in anticipation of the future headaches in store. While my dad was trying to recapture his glory days in the navy, my mom would be saddled with the practical realities involved in readying seven kids for an afternoon on the water with this unapologetic perfectionist who’d never owned his own boat before. While he climbed up the tiny flybridge to steer, it was she who’d have to cram the brown bag lunches, sunblock, blankets, and seven kids into the tiny galley below deck every time it rained. When we arrived at the Housatonic marina for our maiden voyage, we caught our first glimpse of the new (used) twenty-four foot cabin cruiser—or at least what had been one in a previous life. It bobbed sadly in between the majestic boats on either side, as lifeless as the floating bunker fish that surrounded it. These being the days before they cleaned up Long Island Sound, this was a far cry from “sailing the ocean blue.” My mom’s eyes began to tear up, but I couldn’t tell if it was the smell of the fish, low tide, or the sight of the boat. Dad christened his dream boat “The Irish,” a loving nod to our family heritage, ignoring the somewhat checkered maritime history of the Irish themselves. He’d soon discover the irony. Out of necessity, my dad required that we immerse ourselves in nautical jargon. There was no front or back of the boat; only “fore” and “aft;” no left or right…

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Fun with Footprints

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on July 14, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) Earlier this month, Canada joined France, Japan and Russia by refusing to extend the Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to limit the emissions of industrialized countries (the US reiterated at a recent G8 dinner that it would continue to fight for climate change “outside the Protocol”). Poor and emerging economies wanted to extend the pact, but the departure of these big countries at U.N. climate talks that ran from June 6th to June 17th in Bonn, Germany, have cast a pall over the Green movement. While I respect how important “green” sustainable living is to the future of our planet, the infancy of this movement makes for great comedy. Take carbon offsets, for example. A carbon offset is a reduction in the emissions of greenhouse gases or any carbon dioxide equivalent in order to make up the emissions made somewhere else. In other words, my wife guilts me into buying and planting trees to make up for the fact that I bought an SUV six years ago. In theory, they bridge the gap between what we should do and what we will do. In practice, however, they can be ridiculous. Rather than doing the hard work of capping harmful emissions, companies turn to carbon offsets as sinners do to the Catholic confessional: do what you like, but one visit to the priest absolves all sins. Unlike your spiritual salvation, however, you don’t need to wait long to see if it worked; former vice president Al Gore gives you the dispensation immediately (especially if you work for Generation Investment Management, a company Al Gore co-founded in 2004 that buys carbon offsets for all its employees). The logic defies me. The next time I go out to eat, I will respond to my doctor’s concerns about my weight with, “I’ll order all the food I want, but I’ll also make sure to buy my dog a big salad. That way, it’s almost like I ate what I was supposed to, and not like the bloated pig I’ve become.” Even better, carbon offsets are now treated as a commodity. The Kyoto Protocol sanctioned offsets as a way for governments and private companies to earn carbon credits that could be traded in the global marketplace. The protocol established the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a watchdog that ensures “real” benefits as a result of the actions taken. In my case, I can store up the “credits” I created when I was forced to eat a salad after I’d run out of pizza last weekend and really go hog wild before the next tailgate. I haven’t worked out the math yet, but I’m thinking one salad offsets about 6,000 calories. God I love healthy living. Luckily, the creators of the Kyoto Protocol are not as dumb as I am, so surely they had a better way to get the word out to the public before the initiative began. After setting these important standards, the…

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Homemade Holidays

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on June 30, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) I had an interesting conversation with some eighth graders the other day—yes, it can be done. They outlined their summer vacation plans in relation to two national holidays that bookend their seven-week break: the 4th of July and Labor Day. As they spoke of the coming academic year, they continued to use holidays as the milestones with which to mark important events. I find it sad that they see the days ahead as a small number of “important” dates in a sea of “filler days.” It’s like the people who celebrate “hump-day” every Wednesday because it’s halfway to the weekend, an outlook that reduces five days of the week to drudgery in the hopes they’ll enjoy the final two. What a rotten ratio. Of course, as a teacher, I’m constantly planning my instructional units against the holiday calendar. I’ve been around long enough to know I have to finish a unit before vacation, otherwise the Magic Troll robs my students of all memories of what I taught them before the break. During the school year alone, we have Labor Day, Columbus Day, Halloween, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Groundhog Day (okay, a bit of a stretch), Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, April Fools Day (even more of a stretch unless you’re a middle school teacher), Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, and Father’s Day. This list doesn’t even include other religious holidays such as Easter, Passover, and others that don’t coincide with winter or spring breaks. No wonder our children begin to think in terms of “important” days and “other” days. Shouldn’t every day be important? What we need is a way to turn those “filler days” into “killer days” (and no, Walt Disney Corporation, you can’t steal that for your next promotion). Take today: Thursday, June 30th. Nothing special, unless you happen to celebrate Meteor Day, an observance of the 1908 Tunguska Comet Impact in Siberia, Russia… and who doesn’t? However, there are too many interesting things about this date to saddle it with such a pedestrian name. Three great Americans were born on this day: former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson in 1966, actress Christine Taylor in 1971, and swimmer Michael Phelps in 1985. One of these three is a drop-dead, stone cold fox. I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t Mike Tyson. Speaking of Mike Tyson, on this date in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho opened. Speaking of Psycho, in 1994 the US Ice Skating Federation barred Tonya Harding for life. See how special this day is already? In fact, June 30th is chock-a-block with interesting moments: in 1865, eight conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln were found guilty; in 1914, Mahatma Gandhi's was arrested for the first time; in 1936, Margaret Mitchell's published her novel Gone With the Wind, which logically led to the 1952 debut of the TV soap opera Guiding Light. In 1974, Soviet…

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The Flowers of Graduation

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on June 16, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) Tis the season for high school reunions—I can tell by the sheer number of messages sprayed onto car windows with shaving cream and cake frosting. I need to see through my windows as I drive, however, so permit me to put my thoughts on paper instead. To Graduating Students: Congratulations! As you stand in line to get your diploma, take a moment to remember that first frightened walk to your kindergarten seat so many years ago. How did you end up here, a refugee from an Elton John video, dressed in a frumpy gown and funny hat as you fuss over a tassel? You’ve come a long way, baby. Now, the bad news: you haven’t really learned anything important yet. High school teaches you how to learn, but the real world doesn’t care about the area of an isosceles triangle. Instead, now you’ll be expected to be open enough to learn what really matters. I like how Cambridge University puts this in perspective, referring to its graduation day as General Admission. That degree you just received is a ticket, nothing more. Which show you go to, and how much you enjoy it, is up to you. Choose wisely. If you’d allow me to offer a bit of advice about handling this big day, I’d ask you to thank the family and friends that helped you get to this point.  Too often we wait for important occasions to show our full appreciation to the ones we love, then forget to do so amid the distractions of the day. It’s a sad reality that twelve years of full-time academic study for adolescents remains unattainable for most. Your family made sacrifices to provide you this opportunity; it’s their day, too.  That means that, yes, you have to kiss Aunt Marge. It ain’t pretty, but all of us had to do it. Besides, she doesn’t give you the card with the check inside until you do. To Parents of Graduating Students: Congratulations! Now that he’s graduating, you’re “this close” to turning Timmy’s bedroom into a yoga gym. Before you send him off to college, though, you have to shepherd him through the events surrounding the commencement. Remember that part I wrote earlier about how graduating students should remember that it’s their family’s big day, too? Forget that. This is their day, even if you have relatives and friends coming from all over the country and you’re still scrounging for additional tickets to the ceremony. Bite your tongue when your kids say that today will be the most important day of their lives; let them bemoan that this will be the last time they’ll be with all their friends as a group again. Let them enjoy their pre-nostalgia with whatever hysterics they can muster. Don’t worry that your kids will read this and neglect the advice I gave them earlier about thanking you: I find that students won’t read anything addressed specifically…

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An Open Letter to My Neighbors

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on June 2, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) I love my neighbors, at least the ones who live close enough to walk over and egg my house if they don’t like this piece. It’s the rest of you I need to speak with, so I’ll address you individually. After all, one of the advantages of having one’s own column is the ability to save on stamps. To the guy who keeps revving his motorcycle engine at 2:30 in the morning: You’re aware of the function of a muffler, right? More than mere decoration, it’s designed to significantly reduce the sound of your exhaust. I’m not supposed to feel in my chest how well you’ve cleaned your carburetor each time you pass my window. More importantly, you were supposed to get over needless revving when you outgrew your Big Wheel. If you still feel the need to announce your presence to those of us silly enough to sleep at these hours, try putting baseball cards in the spokes of your wheels. Or cure cancer. Either way. To the idiot who cuts through parking lots rather than waiting for the light to change: I secretly hope someone backs into you as you race through those parked cars to save that extra 60 seconds. I don’t want anyone injured, I just want your car badly dented. I know that’s horrible. I’m sorry. To the people who still throw trash out their car windows: Is your life so tightly scheduled that you can’t hold on to that bag of Fritos long enough to find a trash can? This isn’t the Space Station—we have regular trash pickup each week, and it’s already paid for in our taxes. Did you never see the crying Native American commercials? To the woman who jumps in front of me on the platform just before the train comes to a full stop in order to be the first one inside: Look, it’s a guessing game to stand in exactly the right spot on the platform so that the doors are directly in front of you when the train comes to a halt. We all know the rules. You guessed wrong. You can’t cheat and walk in front of the winners, the ones who spend months estimating the diminishing velocity and distance of a moving target. If you want to be first, earn it—like we did. I’m not afraid to step on your open-toed shoe. To the guy who drives around in the Ford Crown Victoria with the standard-issue search light still bolted to the driver’s side door: Do you notice how traffic slows to a crawl wherever you go? Are you trying to give us a heart attack every time we notice you in our rear view mirrors, or is driving around in an unmarked police car just your way of fulfilling a fantasy? Unless you’re leading a search party for a missing child, you can lose the search light. And the Ford Crown Victoria.…

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Monday Morning Raptureback

Say what you will about his failed Doomsday predictions, Harold Camping makes for fascinating theatre. As I wrote in my column just before Judgment Day (http://www.stratfordstar.com/opinion/my-voice/walshs-wonderings/69116-sign-of-the-end-times.html), Harold has a very healthy belief in himself—track record be damned. He’s even managed to kick it up a notch since emerging from his hobbit hole, declaring that he was right all along—lack of Rapture be damned. Turns out we’re still on for the End of Times on October 21, 2011—especially the damned. Asked for a comment by the International Business Times on May 21 after (surprise) he was still eartbound, Camping opened his door in a Members Only jacket (he has to be the sole surviving member at this point) and asked “Just give me a day. This is a big deal, and I gotta live with… I gotta think it out.” Addressing the media from his studios on May 23, Camping said, “If people want me to apologize I can apologize (Author’s Note: that’s not an apology). Yes, I did not have all of that worked out as accurately as I should have, or wished I could have, but that doesn’t bother me at all because I’m not a genius.” Not a genius? Hush your mouth! You just managed to fake an apology while deploying the “I’m only human” defense for taking on the superhuman task of being God’s public relations rep. Even better, he went on to say that he really wasn’t wrong at all. He said the Rapture was to be understood spiritually, not physically. “The sense of it is still the same, that Judgment has come, that we are now under judgment where it was not prior to May 21st. Spiritually there’s a big difference in the world that we can’t detect with our eyes.” In other words, the election results aren’t in, but all the precincts are closed. We’re just waiting for the final tally. Want proof? Well, you can’t see it with your eyes, silly, so… no. No proof for you. Instead, his Family Radio empire touts his new slogan, “We are almost there.” It reminds me of my dad as he packed my family in the station wagon for a 12-hour trek to Ohio. We’d whine, “Are we almost there, yet?” and he’d answer, “Yes.” Then we’d be in the car another four hours. We’re in for a long ride, folks, and Harold is just ramping up. On May 3, 2009, Harold addressed a packed gym of about, oh, 24 people about Judgment Day. He spoke of carcasses being thrown into the streets and desecrated because they are under the wrath of God—who knew how excited folks would be to finally get to desecrate bodies? Some of you might be wondering, “Why us? Why now?” First of all, quit your whining—we’re almost there. Secondly, we are being punished more than the folks from the previous 13,000 years because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sorry. These are the drawbacks of being a…

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Sign of The (End) Times

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on May 19, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) It was a cold January morning when I drove past the Barnum Avenue billboard in Bridgeport, but its message warmed my very soul: “He is coming again! May 21, 2011.” I pulled my car to the side of the road and wept tears of joy. The message couldn’t have been any clearer: Justin Bieber must be scheduled to perform in the Arena at Harbor Yard! My wife was the first to break the news. “It’s not Justin. They’re talking about Jesus.” My sense of disappointment was deeper than missing out on a Bieber Experience: while meeting Jesus was something I’ve always had on my Bucket List, I was hoping it would be the last item left in the bucket. Luckily, the 21st is a Saturday—this won’t be the traffic nightmare it could have been. Because I am a geek in addition to being somewhat dim, I looked into the organization that so crushed my heart. Turns out the man behind the sign is Harold Camping, the crusty biblical scholar that runs Family Stations, Inc., a Christian broadcast ministry based in Oakland, California. He’s the barnacle on channel 66 WFME, an impossibly frail figure whose seated biblical lectures are broadcast around the clock. This isn’t his first Armageddon rodeo. In 1992, Camping published a book titled 1994? in which he established Sept. 6, 1994, as the return date for Christ. Oops. He later admitted that his math might have been incorrect. This time, his logic is clearer: he has devined that the number 5 equals "atonement." Ten is "completeness." Seventeen means "heaven." In an interview with Justin Berton of the San Francisco Chronicle in 2010, Camping explained how he reached his conclusion that the world will end on May 21, 2011. He determined that Christ was put on the cross on April 1, 33 A.D. It’s been 1,978 years since that day. Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days—the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year. Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500. Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500. Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared "I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that," Camping said. Me, too! It’s so simple I’m surprised we missed it. In his appropriately named follow-up book We Are Almost There! he presents additional Biblical evidence which points to May 21, 2011, as the date for the Rapture and October 21, 2011, as the date for the end of the world. Followers of Camping claim that around 200 million people (approximately 3% of the world's population) will be “raptured,” or bodily pulled into the air to meet Christ upon His return. The rest of us will mope around…

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As Easter Approaches

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on April 21, 2011, in “Walsh’s Wonderings”) This past Sunday marked the beginning of Catholicism’s "high holy days" with Palm Sunday, a day that commemorates Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and eventual showdown with Pontius Pilate. It is one of the six Holy Days of Obligation in the Catholic Church. These mark important events that merit participation in the holy sacrifice of the Mass. On Holy Days, much like Sundays, Catholics are supposed to refrain from unnecessary work and attend church services. As a child, Palm Sunday meant three things: we got the brand new parish calendars (with the dates of all the upcoming parish league basketball games), we received our palm fronds (plastic-like, yellow-green leaves that we formed into crosses and put over our beds), and finally, that Easter Sunday was only a week away! For Catholic children who’d been forced to give up something meaningful for the 40-day Lenten season that culminates on Easter morning, this was the light at the end of the tunnel. I grew up believing that the Easter season was chock-o-block with Holy Days and the dreaded weekday masses they entailed. My mom pulled us off playgrounds for masses on Ash Wednesday (the start of Lent which finds Catholics receiving ashes on our foreheads while praying for strength in preparation for Jesus’ death and resurrection), Holy Thursday (the day on which Jesus and his disciples have the Last Supper), and Good Friday (the day on which Jesus was killed). It was only while looking into joining the seminary after college that I learned that none of these days required us to go to mass. With seven rowdy kids on her hands, my mom kept up the ruse in a desperate attempt to save our souls through overexposure. She also “suggested” the items we give up for Lent each year, and inevitably that meant no sweets at all. By the time Easter Sunday rolled around, the Walsh kids were irritable and jumpy in the throes of sugar withdrawal; we counted down the hours like addicts outside a methadone clinic and dreamed of the baskets of candy that waited for us upon our return home. Because my mom forbade us to touch them until after mass, we spent our morning trying not to hate the children snacking on chocolate bunnies in the pews around us. How the crucifixion of Jesus Christ has been marketed into a festival of marshmallow chicks and egg-shaped chocolate lorded over by a giant rabbit is beyond me. Even as a child with a harelip who should have seen this animal as a role model, I saw little value in the Easter Bunny. He doesn’t even have an opposable thumb! Easter celebrates our victory--through the death and resurrection of Jesus--over eternal death, but all the Easter Bunny does is hop around and hide eggs. I was never even clear on whether the bunny was the one leaving us the candy baskets in the first place, so weak…

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